


From Out the Vanished Ages

by weytani



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, F/F, Resident Evil AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-13 00:29:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7130813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weytani/pseuds/weytani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Root follows a group of armed strangers down the wrong rabbit hole.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Vermilion

**Author's Note:**

> I have... a ridiculous obsession with this movie?? No relation to the games, probably. Tags and rating will change as things develop, but expect lots of Death and Bad Times (I mean, zombies, you know).
> 
> Title from Lewis Carroll's 'Dreamland'.

She woke up with her cheek pressed to cold ceramic tile, water drumming against the upturned side of her face and dribbling down across the bridge of her nose. Groaning, she turned away from the spray and rolled over onto her stomach. Her legs were caught in some kind of sheet that stuck to her wet skin as she tried to kick it off.

Her eyes opened to white walls and checkerboard floor panels. She was in a bathroom, somehow, naked in a shower that she didn’t recognise with the curtain crumpled at her feet. The hooks were bent all crooked at one end, as if she had ripped it violently from the metal rod above her head. Based on the flare of pain along her right shoulder when she turned to look at it, maybe she’d clung to it mid-fall.

Not that she could remember. In fact, the events leading up to that moment were footnotes to a long list of things she couldn’t remember.

At the top of which was her name.

Inhaling through her teeth at the fresh stab of pain, she sat her forearm on the lip of the shower stall and managed to get up. Only when she was on her feet, mind finally sieving through its state of disorientation, did she realise something else. Lying on her side, with her ear pressed to the ground, she hadn’t noticed the difference, but now it was apparent; she couldn’t hear anything out of her right ear.

This, she thought, should be troubling her. But then, everything about this situation was troubling. Better to focus on the things that she could actually do something about—finding clothes, for example. After that, she’d get her answers.

She reached up for the tap, twisting until the water shrank to a meagre drip, and almost immediately found herself regretting it. The room was filled by an eerie silence, and she realised very quickly that she was not fond of the quiet. There should have been something... something else.

But she needed to make use of what little hearing she had; wherever she was, she was vulnerable. With one ear checked out and the closest thing she had to a weapon being the stick end of a toilet brush, she was already facing some pretty terrible odds.

There was a large oval mirror hanging above the faucet, and she swiped her left hand across the face of it to clear the steam. She saw herself then, a face she only vaguely recognised, all wide eyes and pink cheeks, long brown hair curled and damp at the ends where strands of it were still sticking to her shoulders.

Behind her right ear, she found a long surgical scar that told her the hearing loss wasn’t going to be a temporary thing. Her shoulder was visibly bruised from the fall, purpling and tender when she pressed a curious finger to the edge of the discolouration.

What was most interesting to her was that this was not the only bruise.

Her neck was rimmed with dark brown markings, the shape and size indicating that someone’s hand had been around her throat, and not briefly. Dotted across her torso she found a constellation of smaller, less aggravated bruises, each of them about the size of her thumbprint, and lower, a criss-cross pattern of healing cuts in the dip between her breasts.

She wondered what kind of life it was that she led, to be so heavily marked up. Her reflection looked young, lean but not muscular; attractive, though she did say so herself. That made her smile a bit.

Turning from the mirror, she spotted a pale bathrobe hanging by the towels across the room. It wasn’t generous in size, and the material was flimsy and delicate, but she felt less vulnerable when she wrapped it around herself. Still, she eyed the toilet brush again on her way to the door.

The knob turned without protest, she was relieved to discover, and she found herself stepping into somebody’s very luxurious bedroom. There was a red dress laid out on the double bed, as if left there for her to wear after the shower, but she made for the window instead, lifting the curtain to peer outside.

A thicket of trees and a distant sunset were the only things in sight. She waited for a minute, observing the sky as it bled morosely from purple into dying yellow between the branches.

The room she was standing in seemed to be on the first floor. With some leverage and a bit of sheer luck, maybe she could scale the building without hurting herself – if the need arose.

For the time being, there didn’t seem to be any danger in exploring a little more. The bedroom door was shut, and someone obviously cared enough to lay out clothes for her. Besides, with her memories still evading her, there was no way of knowing that this wasn’t, in fact, her own bedroom.

She turned away from the window, letting the bulky curtain drop from where she’d been holding it up, and her eyes caught a glint of something on the dresser by the bathroom door. She went to it, crossing the room in five cautious steps.

A ring. Gold, potentially, and about the size of her fourth finger, though she didn’t dare test it. The band was smooth and undecorated, but when she picked it up between her thumb and index finger, she could read the words ‘Property of Decima Technologies’ inscribed around the inside of it. The name was unfamiliar, but she felt something like rage prickling as the words sounded in her mind.

Whatever this ring was designed to do, she didn’t want to find out first hand.

(Or maybe she was the property. That was an unpleasant thought.)

She set the ring down where she had found it, letting her gaze stray to the open notepad at the other end of the dresser. Written in a messy scrawl, underlined twice like it was a matter of great importance, she read the words: **_MY NAME IS ROOT_**.

Root. She repeated the name a few times in her head. Who was Root?

There was a pen lined up neatly beside the pad, and, on a whim, she picked it up – with her right hand, noticeably, so that was something else she’d learned about herself – and started to mimic the words underneath.

_MY NAME_

The handwriting was near identical.

Another question answered, it would seem. She felt a little more at ease with this new information, like she was finally settling back into her identity, and it gave her confidence.

Root dropped the pen and started pulling the dresser drawers open one by one. In the first drawer, she found a generous mix of plain white briefs, bras, and some colourful, more expensive-looking delicates. She spotted the blunt end of something poking out from the more fanciful side of the drawer, but decided she’d rather not wade too deeply into _that_ particular privacy pool. For hygiene reasons more than any real consideration on her part.

Instead, Root helped herself to a black bra and matching underpants, the most practical ones she could find. God knows she’d have a hard time fighting for her life in that corset tucked away in the corner.

In the second drawer, Root found a row of neatly folded linen. Useless for now, but she filed that away as something to consider later, should she decide to actually make her escape through the window.

And then things got interesting.                Drawer number three contained enough heavy artillery to arm a squadron of trained fighters. Root thought maybe the sight of so many guns shouldn’t excite her as much as it did; unfortunately, there was a sheet of glass between her and the equipment, and a keypad etched in the centre with the word LOCKED flashing green below it.

Root pondered for a moment, wondering if she could draw the code out of her head by sheer force of will, or maybe by tapping at the keys until muscle memory kicked in. Neither worked. The LOCKED sign turned an angry red after multiple attempts at the latter. She rapped at the glass with her knuckles a few times, carefully in case there was a security system waiting to rip her arm off for trying.

Maybe they weren’t her guns after all.

Disappointed, Root pushed the drawer back into place and decided she might as well put some real clothes on. She threw her bathrobe down over the red dress, an act of rebellion to nobody in particular. Surely there were better things to choose from somewhere in this room.

She was right. After some rummaging, Root managed to dig out some jeans and a loose t-shirt from a walk-in closet which she hadn’t yet investigated. The outfit fit her just fine, and it wasn’t a stretch to assume the rest of these clothes would too. It was a shame that she still couldn’t access her gun drawer. Root thought holding one in her hand might just slot something into place.

There was a mirror inside the closet, smaller than the one in the bathroom, and she took a moment to look at herself again. If she kept trying, maybe she’d remember something.

But it was the same unfamiliarity as last time. Her skin had lost its pink hue from the shower, and her face looked more alert now, but nothing else had changed. Idly, Root found herself tracing the bruises on her neck with an index finger. Whose handprints were these? Someone close to her or a stranger out for blood?

She’d find out eventually.

After working her feet into some clean socks and a pair of boots that she’d grabbed from the closet – a perfect fit, of course – Root decided it was time to get herself the hell out of this place. She needed to find people, people who knew her, so she could get a step closer to knowing herself, and figure out why she couldn’t remember anything.

The bedroom door hadn’t been locked either, and Root was starting to feel much less like a prisoner than a resident here. She walked out into an empty hallway, hugging the wall as she followed it down a curving flight of stairs. At the bottom, she spotted an entryway with no door, some old-style furniture just barely visible in the room beyond it.

Root took a step towards the room, and stopped when she caught something else in her periphery. High on the wall, where the hallway took a sharp left ahead of her, was a surveillance camera directed right at where she stood, a red light blinking in the corner.

“What’s going on?” she asked, only afterwards realising the futility of speaking to a piece of machinery. The camera blinked its little speck of red in response.

Root shook her head at her own behaviour and slipped through the entryway, out of the camera’s line of sight. This new room was almost twice the size of the last, and far more open. The furniture was kept to the edges; wooden counters and a couple of uncomfortable looking armchairs that she’d spotted from the hallway were placed around the room. One of the walls was made up of floor-to-ceiling windows, and Root could still see the sun hanging low through the open curtains.

Not far from the entrance, propped up on one of the counters, was a framed photograph. It was a picture of Root dressed all in white, a veil sitting over her head, and at her side was a man who could only be her husband. Ah.

This revelation opened more doors than it closed. Where was this stranger, with his dark, coiffed hair and his confident smile? Was he the source of all the cuts and bruises that seemed to cover every inch of her body? Did he assault her in the bathroom and knock her unconscious?

For now, at least, Root could finally claim this mansion as her own home. And the gold ring from earlier... well, she was still in no hurry to slip that thing back onto her finger, which was curious in its own way. Nothing about this place seemed familiar or comforting, even as the smaller things came back to her.

A heavy thud from behind sounded through her left ear, and she turned on the spot, hand automatically flying out for the closest throwable object- the picture. But the room was still empty; darker, now that the sun has finally set, and the only light in the room crept in through the windows.

Root set the frame down warily. It was difficult to source the noise from just one good ear, and she had already been knocked out once today. Potentially. “Who’s there?”

On the far side of the room, she now noticed an alcove taking up at least half of the wall, and inside it Root could see the figure of a winged woman, hands cupped together in prayer as she sat upon her stone podium. A transparent sheet was thrown over the statue, clinging to one side of the woman’s face and flaring out on the other like wind was pulling at it from some out-of-sight door or window.

Root took a step towards the alcove and then her vision flashed white, blinking back to somewhere else in short, dizzying bursts inside her head. She was standing in front of this angel again, a thick scarf bundled up under her chin and the musky smell of tree bark settling at the back of her throat as she inhaled.

The statue used to be outside. Root could see the trees in vague outlines, too out of focus for her to really concentrate on them. She was talking- talking to who, though?

“I’m not sure I can do this...”

“... something else down there...”

“... _Samaritan_...”

The words between didn’t shape themselves in her memory, and the whole thing faded out from one step to the next. Root found herself back where she started, feet inches from where the wall receded, and she could hear the wind now, could see that the alcove was actually another hallway leading out of sight around a sharp corner.

The wind picked up, becoming louder and angrier, and something else filtered in through the noise. A distant whirring and the low fwup-fwup of something beating at the air quickly and repeatedly. Root knew the sound of a helicopter well enough to recognise it now.

She stepped back, thinking _hide_ or maybe _what the hell_ , and a warm hand settled over her shoulder just as all hell broke loose.


	2. White Rabbit

Glass sprayed across the room as one of the windows shattered inwards. Root threw herself to the left, spinning away from the hand still grasping at her shoulder with both arms thrown up to shield her face.

A small black disc landed on the floor at her feet, motionless for only a second before it let loose a cloud of gas which blurred her vision and sent a wave of nausea roaring through the rest of her. Root tipped her head back, trying to hold her breath, and only managed to make herself feel sicker.

There was another body on the floor not far from where Root had landed on her ass, though it was hard to make out with her head still swimming. Whoever it was that had grabbed hold of her a second ago was curled up facing the other way, but Root could see the short, spiked points of their dark hair, and the tip of their glasses jutting out from behind one ear.

As soon as the gas hit, the rest of the windows gave way. Figures clad all in black came feet-first through the broken frames, faces a sinister blur until the gas released its hold on Root’s system and she saw the masks for what they were.

Root counted the intruders, eyes flicking from one to the next as she shuffled backwards on the floor. One, two, three, four, five. All wielding guns in hand and in hip-holsters, one in particular with a black tablet tucked under their arm.

Blinking the last of her discomfort away, Root sat with her back to the wall and waited for answers.

At first, nobody seemed interested in her presence. Two of them circled the room, peering through the entryway into the hall and disappearing around the hidden passage in the alcove that she’d found. Another of the intruders, taller than the rest, approached the figure lying prone on the floor beside her and lifted them to their feet.

It was a man, another face she didn’t recognise, his features set to confusion and alarm. He stumbled as the masked figure pulled him up, grasping at their arm for balance, and Root sensed an underlying familiarity in their movements. But as soon as the man could stand on his own two feet, the arm dropped away and a gun was pointed at him threateningly.

Maybe Root had overestimated her ability to read body language.

Another intruder, more heavyset than the first, approached them and cuffed the man’s wrists behind his back. He stumbled forward again as his arms were yanked back, and this time Root noticed the hitch in his step. She wondered if he’d hurt himself from the fall.

“Take it easy, Lionel,” the first intruder muttered in a low, deep voice. He reached up with one hand and pulled the gas mask away from his face. The other man did the same.

“Can’t be too careful,” Lionel said, sounding defensive. “You never know what these Mad Scientist types are walking around with.”

“Actually,” their prisoner spoke in an indignant drawl, turning to face his captors, “I’m an Insurance Salesman.”

Lionel looked at his partner, eyes wide in disbelief. “Hear that, John? Four Eyes thinks he’s some kind of comedian.”

John stood in silence for a minute, expression blank, before he lowered his gun and turned to face the fifth member of their team, who still hadn’t moved from the centre of the room. Root pressed herself as close to the wall as she could, and his gaze dropped to her face for a moment as he marched past her.

Apparently, she wasn’t considered a threat in this scenario. It rankled a little bit, being dismissed so easily. Root considered kicking John’s feet out from under him, but he was already too far away.

“What do we do with this guy, Carter?”

The one in charge, Carter, looked up from where they had been running fingers over something on their other arm. More strange technology, Root guessed. Maybe these people had something to do with Decima.

“That depends.” Carter yanked off the gas mask, her dark, shoulder-length hair tied up in a low ponytail that whipped across her face as she turned around. “Is he who he says he is?”

Lionel reached into the pocket of the man’s blazer and fished out a thick wallet. He flicked through the contents before pulling out a card, dropping the wallet at his feet. Its owner leaned forward as if to pick it up, but apparently thought better of it.

“Harold Wren,” Lionel read from the card. He glanced up at the other two. “We got anything on a Harold Wren?”

Root kept her eyes on the woman as Carter tapped at the device on her wrist, back edging up the wall so she could better see what was happening. Still nobody paid her any attention.

Carter shook her head after a few seconds. “He’s not in the system.”

“Could be he’s just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” John said, picking Harold’s wallet up from the floor and slipping it back into the man’s pocket. Harold looked appreciative of the gesture.

“Could be,” Carter agreed, but she didn’t look convinced. “Maybe we should ask the _resident_.”

Finally, all eyes were on Root. She’d managed to work her way up to a standing position while they were talking. “Report,” Carter said. Was that a question?

Root wasn’t sure how to respond, so she just blinked slowly, trying to look as innocent in all this as possible. Which was true- as far as she was aware anyway. Somehow admitting that she’d just woken up butt-naked without her memories felt... wrong.

“Report,” Carter said again, louder this time as she took a step closer. Root noticed that she was trying to approach from the left, as if she were already aware of Root’s hearing problem.

“Not like you to be so quiet, Fruit Loops.” Lionel’s brow was furrowed as he stared at her.

Root narrowed her eyes, head tilting to the side as understanding dawned. So she really was associated with these window-busting vigilantes; that explained the guns in her dresser. Nothing else was coming back to her though.

“I’m... having a bit of an off day,” Root said finally, scrunching her nose up in an effort to look casual.

“And what’s _that_ supposed to mean?” Carter asked, but the question seemed to be directed at John more so than her. John just shook his head slowly, scrutinising Root’s expression like he was just as confused as she was.

Footsteps clattered across the floor as the other two intruders reappeared from the alcove, this time without their gas masks. The one Root had spotted with the tablet earlier was male, this one a little younger than the other two, his eyes bright with exuberance (or possibly panic) as he all but sprinted around the corner.

Following at a slower pace, gun barrel tapping lazily against her shoulder, was another woman. Beautiful, Root thought immediately, gaze tracking across her confident features, attentively following the dip of her neck into the far too selfish coverage of black on black tactical gear...

 _Oh_. Root blinked and let her head drop back against the wall, feeling a little giddy now for some reason. Apparently she’d just discovered something else about herself.

The first of these new arrivals stormed right past Root, practically thrusting his tablet in Carter’s face as he gestured to it wildly with his free hand. The woman, however, paused not a metre away from where Root was still pressed to the wall, head angled in her direction.

Root looked her in the eyes, grasping for a name somewhere in the haze of her memories and coming back with nothing. Did she know this woman too? Root smiled at her, eyelids fluttering shyly.

Without a word, the woman raised an eyebrow at this display, lips pulling up a bit on one side.

Well, that was interesting.

“ _Captain_ ,” The man with the tablet was saying, as Carter raised a hand and pushed the offending piece of technology out of her face with a grimace. “Something set off the primary defences in the mansion about five hours ago. Whole place got gassed.”

“That explains why Root here looks like she can’t tell her hands from her feet,” Carter muttered. “Take a breath, Cole. You know what the procedure is.”

Cole lowered his hands, looking a bit embarrassed with himself. “Right. Yeah. I’ll go prep for entry.”

He turned on his heel and made for the exit into the hall, but stopped when someone, the only someone Root still couldn’t put a name to, stepped into his path and grabbed his arm.

She looked up at him, chin jutting out with the height difference. “Sure you can handle this? First time at the rodeo and all.”

This was the first time Root had heard her speak. That low tone, so similar to John’s but oh, so much nicer to listen to. Root wanted to ask her all sorts of questions—about herself, and about the things Root still couldn’t piece together.

“Worried about me, Shaw? That’s a first.”

“Just wondering how you’ll cope when I’m not around to hold your hand.”

“Fewer broken bones, if I had to guess,” Cole said wryly.

Shaw’s hand dropped from his arm. She nodded at him, and he offered her a crooked smile in return before walking off. As he disappeared from sight, Root realised she’d been digging her nails into her biceps.

“What’re we doing about our friend in the fancy suit?” Lionel called, taking hold of Harold’s shoulder.

Carter looked at Harold for a moment, considering him. “Is there anything else you’d like to share with us, Mr. Wren?

“I’m very confused by all this, but if you let me go now the police won’t need to hear about it, I assure you.” He looked at her, eyes wide and imploring, but Carter shook her head.

“Strangely enough, I don’t think you broke into this high-security mansion to talk about insurance policies,” she said. And then to John and Lionel, “Let’s take him with us.”

With that, Carter followed Cole from the room, leaving John and Lionel to frogmarch Harold in her wake. From the looks of it, poor Harold seemed to be struggling with a limp. Root supposed this was her cue to follow as well, though she had no idea where. Shaw was looking at her again, almost expectantly now.

Slowly, Root pushed off from the wall and flinched as pain flared back up in her shoulder. She’d forgotten about the bruise from her fall in the shower, and it seemed persistent in reminding her of its presence.

As soon as the pained expression crossed Root’s face, Shaw had taken a step in her direction. Root peered down at her as she approached, their height difference becoming more apparent the closer they became. Shaw wasn’t very tall for a vigilante.

“You’re hurt,” she said then, backing Root up against the wall, and it wasn’t a question. “Let me see.”

“It’s nothing, really.”

Shaw stopped a hair’s breath away, her forehead centimetres from Root’s lips as she tugged at the neck of Root’s t-shirt with two fingers. Root felt it catch at the back of her neck, resisting the urge to lean forward as Shaw inspected her bruise.

She didn’t seem to notice the marks around Root’s throat, or at least she didn’t pay them any mind. Nor did she raise an eyebrow at the various other bruises around the newest addition.

“Clumsy,” Shaw said after some time, her voice a quiet husk between them.

She was so close. Root felt Shaw’s warm breath wash over her throat and tried to keep her own breathing level so as not to show her hand. The fingers tucked in her shirt brushed against the skin of her chest, and Root couldn’t help herself. She ducked her head minutely, leaning into the touch.

“If you wanted to play Doctor, all you had to do was ask.”

Shaw’s eyes snapped up to meet her gaze, fingernails catching on Root’s skin as her grip tightened, and suddenly Root found herself once again at the whim of a dozen searing, white-hot flashes behind her eyelids.

The bedroom she’d stumbled across earlier, curtains drawn shut, lights off, crumpled sheets at her back and something softer, warmer, draped over her front. Her open mouth, gasping for air as blunt teeth grazed over her neck. Root’s arms looped tight around strong shoulders, long, dark hair tangled between her fingers.

The teeth at her throat gave way to a soothing tongue, and Root’s fingers tightened their hold, pulling roughly until she was once again looking deep into the beautiful brown infinity of Shaw’s eyes.

 Root blinked herself out of the memory, hands flying up in surprise. If Shaw had a problem with the sudden vice-like grip on her biceps, she didn’t comment on it.

“What the hell did that stuff do to you?” Shaw squinted up at her as she let go of Root’s shirt.

Releasing the breath that had stifled painfully in her lungs as the flashes struck, Root loosened her grip on Shaw’s arms but didn’t let go. She licked her lips, glancing away to avoid the intensity of Shaw’s stare. “I’m not...”

“You don’t remember anything?”

“Well...” Had that been a _real_ memory? Or a fantasy offered up by her brain in its drug-dazed state? There was really only one way to find out. “Pretty sure I just figured out where all these other bruises came from.”

Their eyes met again, and this time Root held Shaw’s gaze, mouth folding into a playful smile. Shaw played along for a few moments, unblinking, before rolling her eyes, and Root’s smile became a toothy grin.

This, more than anything she’d experienced so far— _this_ felt familiar.

“Hey lovebirds, you planning on joining the rest of the flock anytime soon?” Lionel called, peering in from the hallway as if he were hesitant to interrupt. “Door’s almost open.”

Root let her hands slide back down to her sides, fingers dancing lightly over the padded sleeves of Shaw’s jacket as Shaw drew back and nodded at Lionel. “Yeah, yeah. Just remember, I got first dibs on the blowtorch.”

Lionel huffed a small laugh, palm smacking the wall once in acknowledgement before he disappeared again. Locked doors and blowtorches; Root could feel herself growing excited at the prospect. She moved towards the hall, Shaw a few steps ahead before she stopped and turned on Root, frowning.

“Hey,” Shaw started, pausing to study Root’s features for a few moments, her gaze veering to the right.

“Hey,” Root said, with a warm smile budding at her lips.

“No, I mean-“ Shaw scowled and gestured to her right ear vaguely with one hand. “What about...?”

“Oh, that. I think somebody took Playing Doctor a little too seriously.”

“Any word from your, uh, ‘other half’?”

Root blinked, mouth falling open. She’d already managed to forget the man from the photograph; so he really was her husband—that was unfortunate. Root wondered if the poor gentleman knew he was being cuckolded by a little firecracker with a submachine gun.

It was hard to feel guilt over an affair she barely remembered having.

“Haven’t seen him,” Root said, shrugging dismissively.

Shaw was quiet for a moment, her jaw twitching like she wanted to say something but it was glued to the tip of her tongue. Abruptly, she turned away and stormed into the hall without looking back. Root watched her go, feeling like she’d missed something vital in their conversation.

Maybe the husband was a touchy subject.

She took one last look around, at the upturned chess board in the corner and the angel praying motionless beneath her fluttering hood of plastic. The woman’s fingers seemed clasped in desperation as she overlooked the wreckage of broken glass and foliage between them.

Root smiled to herself as she left the room, wondering if all her days were to be as exciting as this one.


End file.
